We’ll Be Back Next Week (and a Thought About the U.S. Elections)

Thank you for listening to Community Signal. Unfortunately, we are going to take a week off and we’ll be back next week. Sorry for the break. It was a difficult week to find a guest, and I’m sure that wasn’t helped by the elections in the U.S.

To that end, I had a thought I wanted to share with you, a thought I’ve shared before, but is once again relevant to where we are – not just in the United States, but in the world.

I truly believe that well-managed online communities represent the best, possibly last chance for enlightened, thoughtful political discourse on the web. A community with fair ground rules where people can participate on even footing and discuss the issues at hand – that’s what we can provide. Our colleagues in the news media space are doing this work, and many of us manage communities and spaces where this occurs. Discussion and conversation is one of the ways that we can bridge the gap.

When people talk about how civility is dead and how both sides are too extreme to talk to one another, that’s a problem we can help with. It’s a problem we’ve dealt with and, in many cases, solved in our own communities. These are skills that we can use to help our countries and the global community. This is an area where we can be a part of the solution.